CONFESSION DOES NOT EXCUSE

It is never easy to take the high moral ground as much as we preachers are tempted to do. We can all name several famous, now infamous, clergy who have railed against moral transgressions only to be caught transgressing themselves, much to their shame. Every last one of us is a sinner. It goes with the territory of being human.

Thus, we all have sins to confess, moral transgressions for which we are ashamed. It does take guts to stand before other sinful, fallible human beings and confess to our transgressions, even when we cannot deny them, especially if they happen to become front-page news and/or fodder for holier-than-thou talk show pundits. We sinned. We were caught. Now we confess, tears streaming down our faces in humiliation.

We now want to think it’s over and done with. We think that confessing to our sins is punishment enough, that the press, the media, the public, and even those we have offended the most – spouse, children, family – should accept our confession, our sorrow and then allow us to move on as if our courage in confessing was and is enough. It isn’t nor should it be. It should only be the beginning.

For when we are caught in a lie, whatever that lie, that sin, courage is not the issue. There is no one else to blame, even as much as we would like to blame society or human nature or bad genes for our misconduct. We did it. We did it knowingly and willingly. Everyone knows we did it. We cannot blame anyone else because there is no one else to blame. To refuse to accept the blame is not courage but cowardice.

However, standing up to our sins, confessing that, yes, we did it and there is no excuse for what we did, is only the first step. It is not the last step nor is it the only step, as much as we would like it to be. Punishment follows. The problem, of course, is that we want to believe that because we have confessed to an obvious transgression, we are now excused from having to pay any penalty, from being punished.

That’s not courage. That’s hypocrisy. What is even more hypocritical is when we lambaste those who have publicly sinned while engaging in our own immoral and/or illicit activity.  Confession is always the first step in getting back on track even when we have no choice but to confess because there is no way to deny our transgression. Believing that confession now makes us exempt from any sort of punishment other than the humiliation of being caught is an even worse offense.

We live in an era where public confession of public misdeeds is deemed sufficient. It is not because it only leads to worse offenses in the future. It’s akin to confessing to the State Trooper who has just flagged us down for speeding that, yes, we were indeed speeding and believing that, because we owned up to our offense, we should not get a ticket. If the Trooper is kind and let’s us off with a warning, odds are that sooner rather than later, we will be stopped again. Had we received the deserved ticket and the points, we would be less inclined to speed in the future. Escaping deserved punishment does not make us better. It often, sadly, leads to greater transgressions, as we all can attest.